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'Seven Types of Ambiguity'
And a One-of-a-Kind Critic

By

Robin Moroney

Updated Dec. 23, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

As a poet and critic, William Empson upset the British literary world of the 1930s with the force and abruptness of a scientific discovery. His poetry -- devoted to the ordinary, unashamed of its cleverness -- was the opposite of W.H. Auden's. Empson didn't praise a longed-for revolution or write lines like "We must love each other or die." With jagged phrases, erudite allusions and complex rhyming schemes, he wrote about the fermentation process, buildings under construction, German horror movies, even about the odd beauty that your property rights acquire as they extend below your house and far above it...